1. Field
The presently disclosed subject matter relates generally to position determination and more specifically to a method and apparatus for performing area based position determination for terminals in a wireless network.
2. Background
It is often desirable, and sometimes necessary, to know the position of a wireless user. For example, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted a report and order for an enhanced 911 (E-911) wireless service that requires the location of a wireless terminal (e.g., a cellular phone) to be provided to a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) each time a 911 call is made from the terminal. In addition to the FCC mandate, a service provider may provide various applications using location services (i.e., services that identify the position of a wireless terminal). Such applications may include, for example, location-sensitive billing, asset tracking, asset monitoring and recovery, fleet and resource management, personal-location services, concierge services, and so on.
The position of a wireless terminal may be estimated using various techniques including “range-domain” and “position-domain” techniques. Range-domain technique use a number of range related measurements to compute the position of a terminal. Range related measurements include measurements that can be used to determine the actual distance between a transmitter and the terminal. Alternatively, a range measurement can be a relative distance from the terminal to a plurality of transmitters. In the case of a relative distance measurement, the distance between the terminal and each transmitter is not known, but there is a common offset added to each distance value. It should be understood that the value could be negative. Some examples of range related measurements include, but are not limited to, pseudo-ranges, actual ranges, time estimates, and attitude estimates. Range related measurements may be obtained from one or more position determination systems. In particular, a GPS position fix may be obtained from range related measurements (i.e., pseudo-ranges) for a number of satellites in the GPS. Alternatively, an AFLT (advanced forward link trilateration) position fix may be calculated from range related measurements for a number of base stations in a cellular (e.g., CDMA) communication system. Still further, a hybrid position fix may be calculated from range related measurements for a number of both satellites and base stations.
The position-domain technique uses knowledge of the position of the base transceiver subsystem (BTS) that is “serving” the terminal (i.e., is in communication with the terminal) to estimate the location of the terminal. That is, the terminal must be within a known limited radius of the serving BTS since the two are in communication. Typically, each BTS services a defined area, commonly referred to as a “cell.” Cells can be divided into “sectors”. This is typically done by having different antennas coupled to the BTS cover different sectors of the cell. In this way, terminals in each sector can be distinguished from terminals in each other sector based upon the antenna through which communications with the terminals are established.
The terminal's approximate position may then be estimated to be either: (1) the center of the BTS sector, (2) the BTS antenna location, (3) an externally provided location, (4) a default location, or (5) some other location associated in some way with the location of the BTS. A position fix calculated using the position-domain technique is less accurate than a range-domain position fix. Nevertheless, position-domain position fix may be valuable as an initial fix. Such an initial fix may then be used to help calculate a range-domain position fix. The position-domain fix may also be useful as a final fix if the range-domain position fix is either not available or of poor quality.
Regardless of how the position fix is calculated, it is highly desirable to provide an approximate position estimate for the terminal that is as accurate as possible. Since range-domain fixes are not always available or accurate, it would be helpful to be able to more accurately calculate the position of a wireless terminal using a position-domain technique.